A Return Engagement
by Amaranth Adanae
Summary: Sequel to "Rules of Engagement." As far as Naru is concerned, his relationship with Mai is just fine. But a new case presents a new challenge; can Naru deal with a rival AND a house full of dangerous ghosts? Warning: Spoilers for end of series and novels
1. Chapter 1

A Return Engagement

A Return Engagement 

By Amaranth Adanae

Disclaimer: This is a fanwork intended purely for entertainment; no copyright infringement is intended.

Authors Note: This is a sequel to "Rules of Engagement"; you can probably understand what is going on without it, but you'll get more if you have read it.

Chapter One:

"We thought it was a very nice house, at first," the American man explained in careful Japanese. "My firm sent me as a consultant to a growing cooperation in a town called Tokai. They arranged a house for me, a very large house, located conveniently on the edge of the town, near their new facility. It seemed like such a nice town, such a nice house. At first."

"I've been assigned here for several months, perhaps as long as a year, so my wife and children came with me. We thought it would be a good experience for them. My son is seven," he elaborated, "and my daughter, five. We settled in fairly quickly."

The man paused, and seemed to be organizing his thoughts. Or perhaps translating them. Mai thought he was doing very well, considering that Japanese wasn't his first language. Naru sat quietly, taking notes with the cool, inward turning expression on his face that had Mai mentally packing a weekend bag. It was the look of focused thinking that meant they would be taking the case.

The American, Thomas Reynolds he had said his name was, continued, "The new facility was not as popular with the residents as we might have hoped. And my wife noticed that when she went shopping, the locals, already very reserved with a stranger, a foreigner, seemed to get very unfriendly when they discovered where she lived. She might have been mistaken; her Japanese isn't good. But…." Reynolds-san trailed off.

"Yes?" prompted Naru.

"By then, my daughter had started talking about an old man who spoke to her in the yard—an older Japanese gentleman in traditional dress. My wife never saw him, and she worried. There aren't many nearby houses, and none with an older man. The nearest neighbors are an elderly woman and her grandson. And, if he were well-intentioned, wouldn't he introduce himself to us? We were concerned, and suspicious. So, we kept a closer eye on our daughter, kept her in the house when we weren't able to watch her. Yet, she still talked about him. Yokonaka-san, she called him."

"It's hard to recall exactly what happened next. Lots of small things, building up over time. Doors that wouldn't stay closed. You shut them, turned your back, and the next time you looked, they were ajar again. Lights that flickered. Shadows that didn't quite correspond to an object that might cast them. Things that weren't quite where you thought you put them. Little things, easy to explain away—faulty latches and bad wiring. Imagination and poor memory. But then…"

Reynolds-san stood and pulled a small stack of photos from his pocket. He handed them to Naru, who subjected them to expressionless scrutiny for a moment.

"May we keep these?" he asked.

"Of course," replied Reynolds-san. "I never want to see them again."

Naru held out the photos in a negligent hand. Mai blinked at him for a moment, unable to believe he was sharing the photos with her so easily—she had been planning to nab the file from Lin later. Naru sighed in exasperation.

"Mai, start a file. And bring tea."

Naru turned back to their new client before Mai had a chance to take the photos. Inwardly seething, she bared her teeth at him in what she hoped Reynolds-san thought was a smile, and snatched the proffered pictures hurriedly, before bustling to the kitchenette to put on tea water. While it was heating, she carefully warmed the teapot with hot water, measured tea into the mesh strainer, and arranged cookies on a plate, and placed them along with two thin china cups on a tray. By the time she was done, the water was boiling. Balancing the tray carefully, she carried the now-steaming tea into the main room, setting it on the coffee table before Naru and his client.

Naru picked up one of the cookies and inspected it.

"What's in them?" he inquired, with a faint inquiring lift of the brow.

"Ground glass," muttered Mai.

Reynolds-san looked startled. "I don't think I can have understood that correctly…"

"Uh, raisins," said Mai hastily.

"Forgive us," said Naru smoothly. "You speak Japanese so well that it is difficult to remember it isn't your first language. Let us continue in English. I speak it fluently, and Mai, he concluded with a sardonic glance in her direction, "needs practice."

With that, his teeth closed on the edge of the cookie with an audible snap. Mai glared at him; point to the narcissistic bastard. A slightly baffled Reynolds-san thanked him, with a thoughtful glance between Naru and Mai.

Mai retreated hastily to her desk with the photos, before Naru-chan found an excuse to send her from the room. She examined them, listening with half an ear to Reynolds-san's story and the accompanying rapid scratch of Naru's pen. Her eyes widened as she looked at the first glossy print. It showed a sturdy Caucasian boy of about 7 or 8 years (Reynolds-san's son, clearly) standing shirtless with his back to the cameral, head bowed. Across his back were five raw gashes, neatly parallel.

They looked like claw marks.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2:

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction, purely for entertainment purposes. I make no profit, and claim no rights to any series herein referenced.

Chapter 2:

Mai lost the thread of Reynolds-san's story after that, examining in horror the remaining photographs, all of which detailed various injuries to members of his family. Reynolds-san himself had suffered similar gashes across his upper back, shoulder, and upper thigh. His wife had gotten a thinner, shallower scratch on the cheek, and bruises around the ankles, as though a cruelly tight grip had held them fast.

Naru filled her with an outline of the story (after, of course, he made a cutting remark about her inability to do two things at once, or to follow a straightforward conversation in English. Mai refrained with difficulty from sticking out her tongue or responding that there was something seriously wrong with Naru if he considered any of his conversations straightforward. He would likely just be flattered.)

"In the past two months, the incidents have escalated, to the point of physical violence. The first were the bruises on his wife's ankles. She woke in the middle of the night to find something unseen dragging the covers off the end of the bed. She clutched them, and whatever it was transferred its grip to her ankles and tried to pull her to the floor. She said they felt like cold, clammy hands. Neither Reynolds-san nor his son witnessed what caused the scratches—on two separate occasions, they woke up with the marks. Though the wounds were very painful afterward, neither father nor son awoke as they were inflicted."

"Last month, the Reynolds had a priest from a local shrine come out and bless each room of the house. That very night, there was a major disturbance on the porch—the child's tricycle rolled back and forth by itself, balls bounced, potted plants were smashed, and boxes were thrown to the ground. The house itself was without incident for a few weeks, but slowly the incidents resumed within the walls. The little girl claimed to see a dark shadow in the living room, and that something kept pulling on her hair."

"They got a dog, in hopes that the animal might repel any intruders; one evening, the dog started acting strangely. He froze, and began to growl, as though at something in the middle of the kitchen that they couldn't see. The dog ran away the next day; they haven't seen him since."

"We will be going, first, to ascertain whether or not the cause is supernatural—there are a couple of other possible explanations. This could be an underhanded method of protest by the locals. It might also be that one of the members of the Reynolds family resents the relocation and is causing the disturbances, either consciously or unconsciously, in an attempt to sabotage the family's residency in Japan."

"If we are able to rule out human agency, we will move on to possible supernatural causes. The house itself is a relatively new construction, but we will have to examine the previous history of the site. We will also need to explore the possibility that someone with a grudge against Reynolds or his company might have invoked a curse. Speaking of Mr. Reynold's company," said Naru slyly, "they are very eager for SPR to take the case. They have, in fact, paid a sizeable retainer. It's enough to pay for some specialized equipment I've been wanting to get…a calibrated light spectrometer, an infrared camera. I've already put them on order, but it will be a day or two before they get here. I'm leaving Lin behind to take delivery, but I want to get started on the case, so you and I will be going ahead to set up and get started. Lin will bring the new equipment up later. Takigawa will also be joining us later. He had a…live, or a gig, or some such thing."

Mai blinked, not sure she had heard right. Naru was asking, no telling, her to come with him, alone, on a case. No Lin playing chaperone. No irregulars to keep the atmosphere light and casual. Just Mai, Naru…and a houseful of supernatural thingies that clawed up children and scared away dogs.

Mai wasn't sure if she was more nervous of the ghosts or Naru.

Next Chapter: Mai my not convinced Naru is scarier than the ghosts, but Lin is! Lin POV musings.

Author's Notes: Many thanks for all the reviews! I hope that the story lives up to the high expectations—I'm a little daunted by actually writing about a case. The details of the haunting are (very) loosely inspired by a real case, that of the Wyrick family. The Discovery Channel used their experiences as the basis for an episode of the documentary series, _A Haunting_, entitled A Haunting in Georgia. The narration is over the top melodramatic, but some of the episodes are actually kind of interesting—especially as fodder for Ghost Hunt fanfiction.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: Sadly, still not mine. I own nothing, please don't sue.

Chapter Three

There wasn't any doubt which made Lin more apprehensive.

"Naru!" he said sharply, after the young man informed him of the plans. Lin's mind reeled at the number of things wrong with this plan: the fact that it was imprudent to spend the retainer so quickly was the least of it.

It wasn't even really that he didn't trust Naru alone with Mai. The boy's behavior the last few months, since the incident of the kiss in the lounge, suggested that Naru was content with a very mild level of intimacy, at least at this stage in their relationship. That display had clearly been intended to stake a claim, and to get a rise out of Takigawa. It wasn't clear how well it had succeeded at the first, but it had been a wild success at the second—the monk and the miko had simultaneously choked and started stuttering. Lin didn't think they'd been able to string together a coherent sentence for the rest of their stay, and they hadn't done much better the next few times he saw them. Naru hadn't deigned to mention the matter again, but an experienced Naru-observer could detect subtle changes in his behavior towards Mai—a proprietary hand resting briefly on her arm, a quick glance up whenever she entered the room, as if to make sure she hadn't sustained any damage since the last time he saw her (this was usually the space of a few minutes, but Lin had to admit that Naru would be somewhat justified in his paranoia—Mai attracted trouble like a magnet). He had gotten in the habit of taking his assistant out to lunch or dinner a few times a week; not dates, per se, but not entirely work related either. Lin hadn't seen any demonstrations of affection beyond a simple touch since that kiss, and he was inclined to think there hadn't been anything overt—Mai was too calm about the situation.

Lin had been expecting an explosion from Mai, but it never came. He wasn't sure if she had written the entire incident off as a hallucination or a joke, or had simply mentally filed it under "Naru, Evidence of the Incomprehensibility of." Lin was amused by Mai's attitude towards Naru; her concern when he landed himself in the hospital after the Ebisu episode demonstrated a very real care and affection for him, but the rest of the time her attitude was an odd mix of exasperation and long-suffering patience, with occasional flashes of an almost child-like admiration. Lin suspected that that admiration was no small part of her attraction for Naru. Mai was a warm, kind person, and adorably cute—traits that would normally have the boy running for the hills, her unusual abilities notwithstanding. She wasn't exceptionally smart, or particularly beautiful, and an outside observer might have a hard time perceiving the draw. Lin himself didn't see it, in the beginning.

He was starting to see it now. He saw it in her shining eyes, as Naru held forth at the end of each case, at unnecessary and dramatic length. In the way that, even as she grumbled, she adapted herself with ease to Naru's unpredictable whims, preparing his tea precisely the way he liked it and fetching and carrying without complaint. She anticipated his needs faster and faster, until she now fit into the office so seamlessly that Lin had trouble remembering the time before she came. She contributed in some way to the solution of every case (the contribution wasn't always very well thought-out—Lin still remembered the grid marks on the children that she had exorcised. They looked like they had been grilled like mahi-mahi). Yet, she didn't demand the limelight. She was a peahen to Naru's showy peacock—an attentive and appreciative, though not uncritical, audience, with skills of her own, but content to leave him center stage.

Lin could admit, now, that Mai would some day make Naru an admirable partner. She was beginning to show signs of being able to curb his more….spectacular…excesses. But for now, no. Naru was too strong, too unpredictable, and too unruly to be permitted to roam Japan without Lin to supervise, acting as both bodyguard and watchdog. He had promised the professor, and he was all too aware of the sort of trouble Naru could get into if he was out on his own recognizance with no oversight.

Besides, Japan's drivers simply weren't ready for Naru on the roads; despite his precision in his work, Naru seemed to think that a good faith effort to obey pesky details like speed limits and stop signs was all that was required. And while Naru's faith might be good, it was rather weak—he was easily distracted, sinking deep in his thoughts as his foot sunk hard on the gas pedal. At this rate (almost as fast as Naru's average speed, in pedestrian zones), the boy's driving was going to give him grey hair even before his refusal to give up his telekinesis entirely was. It was enough to have Lin clipping Clairol coupons, hiding them in a stash in his desk.

00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Lin watched the van drive away in befuddlement. He wasn't sure how he had lost this argument. He had put his foot down, firmly, in the way that had always, in the past, told Naru where the line was drawn. It wasn't entirely clear what had happened this time—he had told Naru sternly that they were ALL going to wait for the new equipment to arrive, in the tone of voice that brooked no argument. Naru had cast him a sidelong glance through his lashes as he passed him, continuing to pack the van. Mai watched them with wide eyes, poised between Lin and the door, a box clutched to her chest. She clearly recognized the tone of voice, and didn't care to defy Lin. They were allies in Naru Pacification Treaty Alliance, sharing the objective of keeping Naru from doing stupid things that were either suicidal and/or homicidal, and she was clearly not sure she was up to wrangling Naru solo.

"Naru, do you hear me?" Lin had asked, putting an edge of magical power to his words.

Naru hadn't been impressed; he had paused on his return trip and looked Lin straight in the eye, and crossed his arms in front of his chest. Most days, Lin didn't find it a very effective pose for intimidation—it pushed his loose clothing closer to his body, underscoring how scrawny the boy was. Today, however, the look in Naru's eyes more than compensated.

"I hear you. And we're going. I AM the boss here." Naru's voice had its own power; Lin had felt the small hairs on the back of his neck and on his arms rise. Vibrations had caused his teacup, abandoned still half-full on a nearby shelf, to chatter in its china saucer. A few books fell onto their sides, and a pile of notes slid out of its neat pile into across the table top. Mai's eyes, impossibly, widened even further and, still clutching her box like a shield, she had scampered quickly out of the room. Naru had watched him for one more moment, before turning away, raising one thin shoulder in a negligent shrug. "We'll see you the day after tomorrow. Or possibly the day after that. It hardly matters."

With that, Naru had turned and left the room. Lin had felt a sickening lurch in his stomach. The young genius had declared his independence, and the world might never be the same.

Next Chapter: Mai's stuck in the van with Naru, all alone. Is it romantically tense? Or just….really, really dull? And what sorts of tricks does the haunted house have to greet them?

Author's Notes: A slightly longer chapter, and much more in the tone of the first story. I love writing Lin inner dialogue—in the canon, he says so little that, within certain parameters, he's a blank canvas. Thanks to everyone for such lovely reviews!


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4:

Disclaimer: I do not own Ghost Hunt, or the characters used here, except for Mrs. Reynolds. Any resemblance to real people or places is unintentional. No copyright infringement is intended, etc. etc.

A Return Engagement, Chapter 4:

Mai wasn't sure what she had expected from the car trip to Tokai; Lin had estimated that the journey would take three and a half hours, and Mai had been apprehensive about spending that much time alone with Naru in a smallish confined space with no tea, no distractions, and no retreat. Particularly no tea. Naru could be distinctly peevish when denied his fix of steaming Prince of Wales in a proper china cup—she had the feeling that the two thermoses of lukewarm beverage she had prepared before they left, served up in the institutional grey plastic lid cup, were going to be deemed distinctly inferior offerings. She just hoped that tea-deprivation didn't turn Naru into a Mai-eating dragon. At any rate, she had thought cheerfully, the scenery would be pretty.

As Mai shakily slithered down from the passenger seat of the van and flexed her stiff fingers, she really couldn't say whether or not the scenery had been pretty. Her eyes had been pressed tightly shut the entire time, and her hands were sore from the white-knuckled clench she had kept on the arm rest the entire way. The trip had been much shorter than anticipated; Naru had beaten Lin's conservative estimate by almost an hour, and Mai had the windburn to show how he had accomplished it. Mai would have preferred boring. She would even have preferred awkward, tense, silence. Instead, Naru had been in fine form, pleased with himself for having reduced Lin to befuddled silence and pleased to be cruising along in the van without his keeper perched in the driver seat like a storm cloud, pointedly gazing at the speedometer, pushing his foot against an imaginary passenger side brake, and making comments like "You have a turn coming up ahead, Naru. You should start slowing down and looking." Mai could see where Naru would feel that Lin, a cautious driver, was cramping his style.

She now had a much greater appreciation for Lin's apprehensions. Some one _ought_ to cramp Naru's style. Someone with a badge, and a car with flashy lights on it. Where the _hell_ were the traffic cops? They had no business allowing a lead-footed menace like Naru on the road. Not even in a tiny subcompact, let along armed with an enormous black van.

On second thought, the cops probably had a well developed sense of self-preservation. They probably saw how fast he was going, caught the maneuver where he missed the turn and _reversed_ to get back to the exit, and stayed far, far away, looking for an old lady on a walker to escort across a road, or a kid on a tricycle to give a citation to. She couldn't blame them—she didn't really think she wanted anyone dumb enough or gung-ho enough to take on Naru to be armed with a badge and gun and turned loose on society.

Naru had already left the van, and he stood contemplating the Reynolds' house, his arms crossed in front of his chest. Mai tottered over to stand beside him on rubbery legs.

"This house needs to be burned. There isn't any other solution," remarked Naru.

Mai's eyes widened. "The house is so haunted that you can tell that just from the outside?"

"Who said anything about haunted? It's hideous. Burning is the only cure for ugly this severe," he replied caustically. He continued to regard the house with disfavor. It was a very large house, three stories high, and clearly fairly recent construction, an exemplar of what could happen when a large budget met a complete lack of taste and restraint. The style represented an uneasy alliance of east and west, and the mix…hadn't gone particularly well. The heavy rectangular structure, constructed out of large blocks of some pale, heavy stone, boasted an elaborate entryway, a large wooden door surrounded by a frame carved from heavy dark wood in the form of an _O-Torii¹_. A matched set of small bronze _koma-inu²_ flanked the shallow stairs leading up to the entry. Three tiers of balconies supported by massive wooden columns rose from the ground level, and the building was crowned by gabled roof of dark brown glazed ceramic tiles with incongruous flaring eaves, the apex of the gables crowned with _onigawara_, or ridge-end roofing tiles, shaped into sinuous forms that could have been either dragons or dolphins, or some strange hybrid of the two. The façade of the building was punctuated with large, paned glass windows, placed with perfect Georgian-style symmetry. The resulting building was, in spite of its height, dark and squat looking, with a weird combination of architectural details stolen from Sendai Castle, Tara, and an American correctional facility. Naru half expected to be greeted by African slaves in kimono with numbers stenciled across their backs.

The overprocessed, thirty something blonde who answered the door didn't match the décor at all—any of the varied parts of it. Naru had encountered her type before. Back in the States, she had probably been a manicured trophy wife, but the strain of their current situation had reduced her to an anxious wreck. He could see dark circles under her eyes, in spite of the careful application of concealer, and though her nails sported bright red polish, they were ragged, as though she had been chewing on them. Her clothes had been bought for a carefully svelte figure, but she had clearly lost weight, and they hung on her now gaunt frame.

Naru introduced himself in brisk, business-like English, explaining that he and his assistant (a brief gesture towards Mai) had come ahead of the rest of their team to begin the investigation, as he understood the matter was one of some urgency. Mrs. Reynolds eyed them with the dubious expression of a hostess who had unexpectedly had a witch doctor show up at a cocktail party. She mouthed polite pleasantries while mentally debating what to do with them, and Naru used the opportunity to observe the entryway.

The vast, high-ceilinged hallway lived up to the promise of the outside; it was the most pretentious atrocity he'd seen in a while. A single, wide staircase led up to broad landing, where a wooden statute of a male figure in armor perched on a pedestal. From the spear and pagoda clutched in the statue's hands, Naru deduced it was supposed to represent Bishamonten, one of the seven lucky gods, said to dispense wealth and good fortune. Other vaguely 'oriental' antiques decorated the hallway—a Chinese court robe in a ugly shade of mustard yellow, embroidered with fat clouds rested behind glass on one wall, while four panels that had once been part of a screen decorated another, portraying a battle in which oni mixed with warriors on horseback. A large Indian carpet woven with a mix of tan, beige, mustard, and brown covered most of the floor, and a glass-topped table filled the center of the space. The table bore a large urn filled with an immense arrangement of orchids and tropical fronds; the profusion of artfully arranged flowers made Naru think of a funeral home which had thoughtlessly mislaid the casket.

While Naru mentally catalogued the furnishings, Mrs. Reynolds continued to dither on in the background.

"I'm really not sure what Thomas thinks you can do….really, the best thing might be to return home, but he thinks….anyway…" Mrs. Reynolds voice faded out.

"We'll need a room that we can set up as a base, a center for our operations. Do you have a space that might suit?" interjected Naru.

"Um, does it need to be on the first floor?" asked Mrs. Reynolds. "There is a formal dining room through there that we never use—it's big, and has a large table." She gestured towards a doorway off to the left of the front door, and they all turned to look in the direction that she indicated.

Almost immediately, the noise began behind them—a steady thump thump thump, as though something was bouncing down the stairs. Naru whirled around just quickly enough to see an object fall from the final step, and roll slowly across the floor to stop right at his feet. The face of Bishamonton grimaced up at him, like a severed head.

Mrs. Reynolds shrieked, and collapsed in a dead faint, too quickly for Naru or Mai to react.

_Well_, thought Naru, _that hardly took any time at all. Decapitating a luck god—definitely an apropos comment upon on our arrival_.

Notes:

O-Torii: or Torii Gate, the gates forming the entry to a Shinto shrine, and is thought to mark the beginning of holy ground.

An imperial guardian lion, also called a Fu Lion or a Foo Dog, frequently found outside the entrance to a shrine, and is thought to have protective powers.

Author's Notes: Apologies for the long wait; the end of the semester pretty much killed me, and I was having trouble with this chapter—way too much description, and it required a bunch of research. At least the plot is starting to take off!


	5. Chapter 5

Happy New Year! Sorry for the long, _long_ delay—real life has not been kind lately. One of my resolutions is to finish this story without more major interruptions. Apologies for the wait.

Disclaimer: Ghost Hunt does not belong to me; this is a fanfiction for fun and not profit.

Chapter Five:

"Do you think she'll be alright?" whispered Mai. She and Naru stood outside the bedroom where their prone hostess reposed on a mauve satin coverlet. Naru and Mai between then had picked her up off the floor and carried her to the nearest cushioned surface they could find—a settee in one of the downstairs rooms. It was probably just as well she was unconscious; the move hadn't been very graceful. Mai had noted before that Naru wasn't particularly good at heavy lifting. They had then called Reynolds-san, who said he would be home immediately. He arrived in less than ten minutes, looking frantic, and had carried his wife upstairs.

"I think that she'll be back to her usual state of dysfunction once the pills kick in," replied Naru. He had been grumbling since the incident because they hadn't had any equipment set up to record the phenomenon. He had examined the statue, which he found to be cool to the touch, and unmarked except for the cut where the head had been separated from the torso—smooth as hot wire through butter. It was, he explained to Mai in his patented lecturing tone, unusual for a spirit to react so quickly to newcomers. Spirits usually went dormant for a while when researchers came in. The quick response indicated either a very powerful ghost, or a hoax. The incident could easily have been rigged—the cut could have been made earlier, and the unattached head dislodged by a thin wire or string from the landing above at the opportune moment. Naru was impatient to begin work, but Reynolds-san had asked them to postpone their set up until his wife recovered—he feared the noise might make her even more nervous.

Naru was of the opinion that Mrs. Reynolds was such a mess already that a bit more stress wouldn't make any difference, but he had long ago realized that making such comments tended to get him banned from interesting sites, and so had learned to hold his tongue. Instead, he took Mai's elbow and steered her towards the stairs.

"Let's go for a walk until Reynolds leaves," he said. They retraced their steps down the stairs and out the front door. Mai immediately felt more cheerful as soon as they left the ugly, oppressive house. Wordlessly, Naru wandered past the van, which was parked at the top of the driveway. The drive was the sort that inclined up from the road through a stand of trees which served to screen it from passersby before leveling out into a parking area before the house. Mai stood beside Naru at the end of the drive, breathing deeply and consciously enjoying the brightness and warmth of the sun on her skin. Naru stood for a long moment, arms crossed and brows drawn slightly in thought, gazing at the road that ran in front of the Reynolds house.

"Come on," he said to Mai, as he started off to the left. Mai wondered if he had a destination, or if they were just going to wander aimlessly to get a sense of the area. She briefly considered asking Naru, and then thought better of it. Questions would do nothing to soothe his lacerated temper.

The road on which the house was situated wound along the very bottom of a hill, one of the foothills which eventually rose to meet Mt. Yudono. To their left, the wooded rise continued, forming a wall of deep green. On their opposite side of the road, the land dipped a bit before stretching off into a patchwork of rice paddies punctuated here and there with fruit trees. The afternoon sun rode low in the sky, making the fields gleam a mellow gold. Mai felt more tension in her muscles relax; it was a beautiful scene. It reminded her of pictures from her history textbooks—this was the traditional Japan that had endured revolution and war, and had weathered westernization, economic boom, and financial crisis unchanging. She looked at Naru out of the corner of her eye, and wondered what he saw. He spoke Japanese so fluently and was so versed in traditional supernatural beliefs that it was easy to forget that Naru was, for most intents and purposes, a foreigner. Naru carried himself so confidently that he always seemed to own whatever situation he faced, but now Mai wondered what it was like for him. Did he find this landscape familiar and reassuring, or was it alien to him, reminding him that he was far from the country (countries?) in which he grew up? Or for someone like Naru, who had been uprooted so many times in his life, were all places basically the same? Mai occasionally suspected that as long as Naru had his books, his equipment, and his ubiquitous black notebooks, he would be home.

Mai was so deep in her thoughts that she didn't notice when Naru made a sharp left; it took her a moment to realize that he had turned onto a deeply shadowed path that wound through the trees and ascended upwards in a twisting series of stone steps. She was puffing lightly by the time she caught up to Naru, who had paused before the first of three _torii_ gates marking the entrance to a shrine complex. The gates were a weathered grey wood—they may once have been painted, but the paint had long since been worn away. The trees grew close around the gates, encroaching upon the shrine and giving it a shadowed feel. The shrine itself was small, the _honden_ and _haiden_ combined together into a single, modest building constructed of the same grey wood as the gates. The atmosphere was utterly still, so silent that Mai was certain that there were no worshipers present at all, not even a priest.

"How did you know this was here?" asked Mai.

"We aren't far from the Dewa Sanzan here, the shrines of the three holy mountains. There is a popular pilgrim's trail that connects the three shrines," said Naru quietly. "This isn't one of them. This is just a small local shrine, which has fallen largely into disuse. Most people who want to go to a shrine in this area would go to Yudono-san, which is much more impressive. This one is, however, still in the guidebook."

He briefly rinsed his hands at the fountain, and then prowled noiselessly into the shrine itself. Mai watched him and considered following, but then decided against it. Instead, she found a convenient boulder near the edge of the clearing and settled onto the smooth surface. Though it was shaded, the stone still retained the warmth of the day and Mai, who had had a long day, was lulled into a drowsy trance. She could hear cicadas, and the occasional rustle of a branch, but they all seemed very far away.

Mai was on the verge of snoozing when a voice startled her out of her reverie.

"Gracious, child, when did you get here?"

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Author's Notes: _Torii_: Still are gates (see previous chapter). _Honden_: Main hall, the inner sanctum where the shrine's holy object is located. _Haiden_: offering hall, where worshipers offer gifts to the _kami_ in hopes of receiving blessing or aid. I've located the town of Tokai in the Yamagata Prefecture, an area towards the north end of the Honshu island of Japan, northwest of Tokyo. This largely mountainous region is described by Wikipedia as "Hidden Japan," well off the tourist routes. However, the three shrines of the Dewa Sanzan are real, and Yudono-san, Haguro-san, and Gas-san are among the most famous shrines in Japan.


End file.
